i hope this is okay with you.
there was interest, other than mine,
about porting puppy to powerpc at mintppc.org/forum.

http://www.mintppc.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=118&start=0

i'm enjoying the mintppc but was trying to find away
to run puppy, virtually, inside mintppc. i've been posting
results, slim, and questions, several, on mintppc forum.

the developer/maintainer of mintppc suggested that a port
of puppy to ppc was doable in his opinion. in my reply i agreed,
mentioned yr work, linked to the topic here, to yr website, and
included yr useful summary as of last september[2010].

if this is a mistake on my part i'll remove it; my apologies
for not asking ahead of acting...hope things are going well
with you,

It's okay that that you share my work and progress. If there are PPC Linux users out there, somewhere, that are more experienced than I, wanting to take the challenge of porting puppy, then by all means do share.

Speaking of PowerPup, I plan on working on it again this summer, hopefully I'll get somewhere with it and have a minimalistic gui running. (Can't wait for summer, it rains a lot here during spring...)

Yeah I've been watching MintPPC, plan on trying it out sometime. Maybe during summer as well.

I am willing to help but I don't want to start from scratch. Did anyone compile all packages needed for making a recent version of Puppy? What are the current problems and how did people try to solve them?

Ted Dog has been working on Puppyfying a MacMini [intel], but has said;

Quote:

.....Yes sorry the PPC puppy version I almost had workng years ago never could work around Xorg, that and the removal of OtherOS on my dev PS3 by SONY was the final blow. Still have the dev frozen in storage. I looked at if briefly when they found out how to regain linux on PS3.....

So, maybe worth pm'ing him, as well as read the various links in this thread....it's been awhile, but I know, I've posted loads!

Ben, Do you have anything maybe, anyone could work on?

There are several new build methodologies available in the main forum, but I think only Amigo's is cross-OS

All the issues running puppylinux (fatdog64) on mini-mac have been solved. There is no real big changes, that a reordering of modules, init and small config files and one massive download from NVidia to correct Xorg and pipe the sound via HDMI.

After some replies on the MacPup thread Ive decided to name the project iPuppy since no other 'active' project uses that. I guess the first project name choice of AntiMacPup was a bit adversarial.

So it will boot in Apple 'BIOS' compatibility mode but the real iPuppy will boot in EFI mode by passing Apple Chooser and cutting boot time from 3 minutes to under 30 seconds.

This puppylinux did boot in EFI mode but no picture or sound had to go by the flash pattern of the light on my USB drive and a on-screen hicchup when it tried to start X windows.

I'll ask my nephew (the alpha mac-head of our family) if I can use the PPC mac left in the garage for the last 8 months, to dust off the PPC T2 code and see if the Xorg issue has magically disappeared. If you guys know any project using X successfully with PPC give me a PM. I have cross compile for PCC in stasis and need to relearn T2 inside of wolf system anyway.

The only thing I accomplished was swapping x86 binaries with PPC ones in the initrd, that way the ISO would boot.

The main problem was I don't know how to put a linux OS into a squashfs file. (Well, I kinda do. But reading how and knowing how are two different things. ) Then there was the issue of keeping it small enough to fit on a CD.

@Ted Dog: I haven't used that many PPC Linux distros but the ones I have tried with working Xorg are the following:

Slackintosh 12.1
Ubuntu 6.10 Live CD PPC
Frugalware -- (Had to use the xorg.conf generated from the Ubuntu Live CD to work. The bootsplash image wouldn't show in true color even though the desktop was fine.)
GeeXboX was a live CD that I tried in my PowerMac G4. Worked quite nice. But their homepage doesn't seem to be working. You can download it here.

My summer has turned out to be a lot busier than I thought it would be. I haven't even touched PowerPup yet. Guess it's been so long I'm not sure where to start. I've even had second thoughts on whether I want it based on PuppyLinux or not. Whether to use jwm or work with something else to make it feel more "Mac." I want PowerPup to be essentially an alternative for Mac users as PuppyLinux is for Windows users. The main issue is I don't use Linux enough to work with it. Much less to make my own OS. I need to find a place to setup a permanent Linux machine so I can sit down and really learn Linux, some programming, init scrpting, etc. Then maybe I can eventually learn to make an OS. There's just so many things I want to do and not enough time to learn them all at once.

The main problem was I don't know how to put a linux OS into a squashfs file. (Well, I kinda do. But reading how and knowing how are two different things. ) Then there was the issue of keeping it small enough to fit on a CD.

Just put the directory tree into a partition/directory, then run squashfs on it:

Code:

mksquashfs /mnt/home/new-filesystem /mnt/home/pup_xxx.sfs

However, you might need to set the endianness (-le/-be) if it's different than x86..._________________What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose
Some say your toes
But I think it's your mind

I tried Debian 6.04 PPC net install, but reboot failed to bring up start button bar. Daily Lubuntu 12.04 failed to even get that far, but MintPPC worked, but online video is so slow. I think this needs more work with Apple dumping support for all these 16-bit Macs.

I tried Debian 6.04 PPC net install, but reboot failed to bring up start button bar. Daily Lubuntu 12.04 failed to even get that far, but MintPPC worked, but online video is so slow. I think this needs more work with Apple dumping support for all these 16-bit Macs.

I have discovered there are quite a lot of powerpc still used on a daily basis. They were fairly good computers and I see after marked replacement parts are easily available at much lower prices than originally. There are numerous challenges with all the powerpc distros out there, including tiger and osx. The debian related distros are so close to working all fine on these computers, but needs a bit of attention for some applications to run more smoothly. A debian related puppy-ppc would be really interesting for both osx and linux users.

i found mintppc an excellent os for powerpc
i think a puppy port would be even better, in
large part because we run as root and mintppc,
being debian based, does not.

i don't know if an automated build system like
woof or roar-ng which can build a puppy out of
non-pup packages from debian could use mintppc
packages to assemble a ppc, running as root, puppy.

there is finnix [finnix.org] a linux for x86 and ppc
versions, a strong, small, fast--just like puppy--
where user runs as root, like puppy. finnix is debian
based user-root cli os.

if you want a graphical interface then the packages/tools:
apt, install, etc. are there to make it so. the developer has
provided it, for years, as a command line os for sys-admins.
a lightweight gui to fit with finnix would be excellent.

another possibility would be to see if finnix packages
could be used to build a command line puppy to which a
familiar set of desktop tools: jwm and rox might be fitted

one challenge the powerpc pup faces is a shortage of powerpc
boxes for interested folks to test on; at any rate it might help
things along if there was an ppc emulator to run on puppy with
a hassle-free setup and operation.

basilisk ll seems like it might be useful, one puppian has it
running well i gather but i've had an unsuccessful time with
it over 2 1/2 days. a virtual ppc would be handier than the
two actual powerpc units i have, when it came to testing & tuning.

it seems like with clear instructions and possibly some scripts
that a virtual ppc of the mac os 8 vintage could run on puppy
of the wary 5.3, kernel 2.6.3xxx...basilisk2 properties say a 2.6.4
kernel...

As to testers, I currently have an Apple laptop running OS 7.5 and would be willing to be a tester.
I would have to check and see if it has enough memory though.
It seems that most of the older Apple hardware was shortchanged as far as memory goes.
The laptop has the 68000 PPC processor.

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